Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

This was freakishly amazing, simultaneously making me wish I was on a full H binge with [b:Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas|7745|Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas|Hunter S. Thompson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1394204569s/7745.jpg|1309111], [b:Infinite Jest|6759|Infinite Jest|David Foster Wallace|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1446876799s/6759.jpg|3271542], and a whole slew of Stephen King books to cap off this horrific tome of pure poetry.

1959. And still absolutely harrowing today.

I thought movies like Requiem For A Dream or tv shows like The Wire were the most absolutely effective anti-drug memoir ever created by richly immersing us in the addict's life... but no.

Naked Lunch tips the reader right off a cliff into the deep end show more of an Heroin Dream, starting us right at the gross end of bodies breaking down, moving on to 1984-like Reconditioning Centers for total mental reprogramming, thank you very much, and then moving into the skull of a paranoid delusional fever dream of homosexuality and then alien societies.

If I could pick all of the heaviest hot-topics of the day and cram them all together into the heaviest fever pitch of a "normal's" fear, paranoia, misconceptions, and conspiracy theories, making the prose into a Beat-Poetry slam, and then fearlessly drowning the reader in jizz, then this is the book I'd point to as the poster child of all the books that would come after.

Seriously. The impact of this book on mainstream druggie fiction CANNOT be underestimated. Whole horror genres have spawned off of this book in the 80's. Talking assholes? A man who stole an opium suppository from his own grandmother's ass? Spontaneous liquefaction of bodies as a bug's-eye view of our modern society?

This stuff is RICH. It's also disgusting.

Hell, I'm a huge fan of Chuck Palahniuk and Peter Jackson's Dead Alive, and even these guys didn't quite go off the deep end as far as William S. Burroughs.

Hats off. Total Respect. Even if it's an enormously wild button-pusher, it's not like it's un-factual. The drugs are real. The lives of homosexuals were probably quite real for the day and age. The explosion of the importance and the wild revelry makes these things into a realm of All-Importance in this novel, though, making it at first horrifying, then surreal, and then almost pure science fiction. :) Truly a delight. :)

It's also a perfect piece to prepare for Halloween. Perfect for the feels, NOT the camp. I got scared. :) show less

What the fuck was that? You're telling me they made a motherfuckin movie based on that? How? I've got to rent the thing just to see if they added a plot or what.

That being said, I have to admit I kinda loved this book. It's all characters and language play and dirty talk - some of the my favorite stuff. I've had druggie friends, so I recognize easily enough the way things come and go in their minds, reality taking a backseat to whatever chemical's working its way through their minds at the time.

All the parts about dealers and their habit of turning up late - if at all - and keeping the buyer waiting rang way too true for me. I've smoked my share of green in my time, and the man is never home when you want him, never comes over when he show more says he will, and never has a steady supply when you have the cash. Is it because he gets a power high off making the user conform to his actions? Well, I can see where that idea would come from, certainly. I can see how those feelings would lead to a book like Naked Lunch, essentially the rantings of a dry junky recovering from or waiting for his hit.

The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.

I recently read the novel Hogg by Samuel R. Delany, which is probably the flat out dirtiest thing I've ever read. And I've read a lot of porn stories online. In reading Lunch, I could see a major influence on the style and subjects and various sex acts detailed so extensively in Hogg. If anyone wants an interesting and disturbing experience, I suggest reading them one after another. And then taking a long, hot shower with lots of strong soap. Burroughs was less concerned with storyline, though.

final thoughts: Burroughs was a bastard, but the man could fill a page. show less

"

The boy felt a silent black clunk fall through his flesh. The Sailor put a hand to the boy’s eyes and pulled out a pink scrotal egg with one closed, pulsing eye. Black fur boiled inside translucent flesh of the egg.

The Sailor caressed the egg with nakedly inhuman hands — black-pink, thick, fibrous, long white tendrils sprouting from abbreviated finger tips.

Death fear and Death weakness hit the boy, shutting off his breath, stopping his blood. He leaned against a wall that seemed to give slightly. He clicked back into junk focus.

"

Not sure how it took me so long to read this book that's absolutely foundational to lit, especially the kind I like. You see the influence on Pynchon, Gaddis, Ballard, but there's no hit quite as pure and show more incandescent as Naked Lunch itself. A fiery star of a novel, perpetually going supernova. show less

I'd give this book 5 stars except that its author was actually assisted and helped by two other editor/authors whose help wasn't explicitly mentioned: Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Perhaps this is a niggling or petty reason to deduct a star but so be it. I stand firm. (Why not, say, add instead of subtract a star? I don't know. I just don't felt like subtracting it, OK?)

What is Naked Lunch? The title is Kerouac's suggestion (apparently; it's not like I've gossiped with the man). The main characters are a Dr. Benway, Agent Lee, and a whole slew of anonymous actors and actresses. There is, for example, an Agent Bradley, the narcotics agent who poses as a buyer, who eventually becomes a kind of blob that absorbs people whole into show more himself: schluuubpt. I could go on but doing so would obviate your need to read it.

The novel strikes me as fundamentally true to the essence or nature of biological life. And although we humans aren't all (as in: entirely) animal, we are at least partly animal; and as such subject to natural processes. These processes are described in great and loving detail.

The Iliad repeats the phrase, "rosy fingered dawn." Naked Lunch repeats the phrase, "in the junk-sick dawn." The books share no similarities in matters of plot or content. Although, it would be fair to say that both describe a state of nearly total war.

To any child reading this review, let me just say that this is not a novel for children; neither is it a novel for adults who wish to avoid entertainment that is so utterly inappropriate for children as to necessitate exactly this kind of written prohibition. This book could scar you emotionally, is how inappropriate this book is for children. Likewise, adult life itself is inappropriate for children, which leads me to the last thing I'd like to say about this book: Naked Lunch so accurately depicts certain basic human biological imperatives -- e.g., the sex drive, the 'need' for pleasure, the 'need' for the death penalty (i.e., the need to protect ourselves and society from those who wish to harm us) -- as to render these in an almost entirely new light. There were parts of the novel where I felt like I was observing the behavior of creatures wholly alien to my own species; and then with a sudden start I recognized myself in one or both of the actors' roles.

This is a hard book to describe. It's (sometimes) a hard book to read, even if totally compelling. I fear that saying more will be a drag on the book's industry, so I'll stop.

This is exactly the kind of book that you'd expect a man to write who'd several years earlier accidentally shot and killed his wife. Burroughs was a life-long junkie but that didn't mean that his eyes and heart and brain had ceased to function. In some ways, I think, he saw life more clearly than most. show less

If you like books, this is not an enjoyable read.

At the back of the book in Deposition, Burroughs writes "I apparently took detailed notes on sickness and delirium. I have no precise memory of writing the notes which have now been published under the title Naked Lunch."

That's what this book is, a scrambled, pinball shark attack of unpleasant imagery and colloquialisms. I've read previous reviews here, some of which extremely high and mighty proclaiming to have absorbed the "message" and that they "got it". Well done to those. I'm not undermining its importance at all. But to say you read this and thoroughly enjoyed it is outing yourself as quite possibly disturbed.

The first 20 pages excite you. If you want a story, don't read the rest.

a rather frustrating and redundant read, Naked Lunch is burroughs' manner of documenting his experiences with lifelong drug use and his homosexuality, both of which were culturally taboo throughout his life. i mention this because it seems to me the root of the style of writing employed here; facing as much resistance as he must have when being himself, burroughs found an outlet in getting his fractured, policed thoughts on paper. of the many disjointed and largely senseless chapters in this book, there are a few which follow a continuous, uninterrupted narrative structure. there is one in particular concerning a closeted gay man who is called upon by his doctor for a supposedly routine examination. he is psychologically examined and show more underhandedly outed, finding himself confined to the relative safety of the doctor's office and unable to retreat to the outside world. personally, i think this segment gets at the heart of burroughs' personal challenges the most. amidst all the shitting and pissing and ejaculating young boys strewn together in Naked Lunch which offer an insight into the author's psychological turmoil, there are overt glimpses into his own life that soberly justify the seemingly needless vulgarity in his absurdist portrayal of drug addiction and homosexuality. i really think anyone can write a book like this, given enough internalized angst and self-hate, but i guess it does make you sympathize with him and his position. not a fun read at all and a pretty miserable drag to finish. show less

A brilliant experiment of the English language. What I like about this book and some other Burroughs works like The Third Mind is that there is no obligation to read it in order. I open the book to a random page, read a paragraph or two, and go about my day having stirred the noggin soup satisfactorily, if only for a minute.

I love the descriptions of the Mugwump orgies. Some of the most vile and tangible descriptions of anything, ever.